A brief chat with Twerps

Australian guitar-pop group Twerps will be at the Hi-Dive on March 24, promoting the Range Anxiety album, so we spoke with guitarist/vocalist Julia McFarlane about what we can expect.A

Yellow Scene: The band formed seven years ago – how do you think it’s grown in that time?

Julia McFarlane: In surprising ways. We all feel like we’re a little band, but we now get to do lots of fun things that we never thought we would’ve. We still kinda feel like charlatans, like someone’s gonna find out that we shouldn’t be doing these things – we shouldn’t be going on tour to America. Somebody’s going to be like, “Hey, hang on a minute.” So we have never really had a serious approach to our music in terms of, it’s always been an intuitive thing. It’s never been about aspirations. But we’ve got two friends who run Chapter Music who have pushed us to do things, and kind of because of them we just get to do fun stuff now. To answer your question, where have we gone from the beginning – doing surprising fun things that I never thought we would.

YS: Describe the sound…

JM: I guess it would be like guitar-pop. I always hear like, slacker, breezy pop, chill-wave. Those ones really annoy me. I hate hearing that. But guitar-pop – the Velvet Underground is a good reference point in terms of what we all agree on as a band. There are some sad songs and some pissed off songs.

YS: Have you been to Colorado before?

JM: We haven’t played in Colorado but we have driven through. I’m psyched about it, to be honest.

YS: What can we expect from the set?

JM: We try and play bits and pieces from all of our releases, so there will be stuff from our first ever EP that came out on Night People in the States on a tape. There will be stuff from our first album, from our 7”’s and our new album, and from Underlay, the EP that came out last year. A lot of songs off Range AnxietyM but we try to do our songs as best as we can.

YS: When the show’s over, what’s next?

JM: We’re going to Europe and the UK. I’m pumped about that. We’ve been to the States three times before, and it’s really exciting to go back, and after that we go to Europe where we haven’t been before. That’s a bit of a scary thing to do, although it sounds like it’s coming together quite nicely. We’ll be in London with a great band called Prime Time, a four-piece all ladies band. I’m looking forward to doing more touring with some excellent bands, and making another album this year.